It's 3am And Hillary Can't Answer The Phone

Well, Librul Socialist America. Looks like you may have made the right choice.

SOS Clinton's fragile lady bones are preventing her from doing President Unicorn's busy work:


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton canceled a planned trip to Greece and Italy this week because she is still recovering from surgery to repair her fractured elbow.

In Trieste, Italy, Clinton planned to attend meetings with her Group ofEight counterparts on Iran, the Middle East peace process and the War inAfghanistan. She also planned to take part in a gathering of the Organizationfor Security and Cooperation in Europe in Corfu, Greece, which was expected to focus on the tensions between Russia and Georgia.

The Only Iranian Election Post You Need To Read

Myspace Glitter Graphics



From Reza Aslan:


On Friday, Iranians go to the polls to choose a new president in an election that will have profound consequences throughout the globe, not least in the United States, where President Obama has expressed a desire for a thaw in relations with Iran.

Although some 400 candidates signed up to run for the office, the election has become a four-way race, with the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, facing off against the even more conservative former commander of Iran’s dreaded Revolutionary Guard, Mohsen Rezaie; the popular reformist and former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi; and the perennial populist and leftist candidate—Iran’s very own Ralph Nader—Mehdi Karroubi. With only a few days to go, however, the contest is shaping up into a two-man contest—and an unusually bitter, increasingly raucous, and utterly absorbing one at that—between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi.

Four years ago Ahmadinejad burst onto the political scene in Iran as a relatively unknown figure who shocked Iranians, and the world, by beating the powerful cleric and absurdly wealthy businessman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—whose net worth Forbes estimates at $1 billion—to become Iran’s first non-cleric president. Back then, Ahmadinejad ran on a platform of reforming the economy and rooting out corruption in the government.

Four years later, thanks both to a precipitous drop in oil prices and his administration’s reckless financial policies, Iran’s economy is on the verge of total collapse. As a result, Ahmadinejad has reinvented himself as the one candidate who could most effectively reach out to Barack Obama and responsibly open up the country to the international community—something all candidates agree must be done but with vastly different ideas about how to do so. In fact, Ahmadinejad’s campaign slogan is Ma Mitavanim…Farsi for “Yes, we can!”

...Perhaps the biggest surprise of these elections is the role the Internet is playing in the campaigns. Taking a page from the Obama playbook, all four candidates are on Facebook and Twitter (Mousavi’s Facebook page boasts more than 30,000 supporters). Huge, spontaneous rallies have been coordinate by text message.

It seems that, as with the previous elections, large urban centers, including conservative cities like Isfahan and Mashad, will go to Mousavi (it is difficult to find an Ahmadinejad supporter in Tehran!), while poorer and more rural voters are overwhelmingly supporting Ahmadinejad.


The article goes on, with insight from Iranian citizens. Must read.

via The Daily Beast

Morning Dump

The Ayatollah did not care for Barack's sexy rap music video. Guess he's more of a traditional "flowers and chocolates" kind of girl.

Someone should tell the president it's not a good idea to hire a Treasury Secretary that spends money like a soccer mom at an outlet store all hopped up on goofballs.

VP Biden finally finds an appropriate place to say inappropriate things.

There is no such thing as shutting up Barney Frank.

Having a hard time jump-starting your career? Have you tried the Afghan job market?

Or try applying at the Washington Post. Seems like they'll hire anyone.

President Unicorn Sends Sexy Terror Video Message To Fellow Muslins

From Ben Smith:

Here's some unusual direct diplomacy: A video message to the people of Iran on the Iranian new year.

So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran's leaders. We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.

You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right -- but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization. And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create.

Somali Pirates Catch Some Kind Of Iranian Scurvy

No shit.

From boingboing:

Somali pirates who hijacked an Iranian shipping vessel said to be carrying either "minerals" or "small arms and chemical weapons" have, en masse, fallen ill with a mysterious disease. The head of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme has been threatened with a lawsuit by the Iranian government for issuing spooky statements to the press to the effect that there was some kind of evil "chemicals" on the ship.

On McCain's Foreign Policy

From Sully:

What the Obama campaign has lost sight of, I think, and what it needs to regain control of, is the essential message of his candidacy. After the last eight years, we simply cannot risk a continuation of the same reckless, belligerent, argument-losing, ideological and deceptive foreign policy of the current crew. The damage that neoconservatism has done to America, to the Middle East, to democratic norms, to Israel's security, to civilized values and fiscal sanity is immense and deep. From his knee-jerk COld War posture over Georgia to his Rovian campaign tactics, McCain is simply too close to this disastrous record to contemplate. McCain's trigger-happy temperament, shallow understanding of the complexities and passion for military force as the answer to everything is the bigger risk. He is a recipe for more, wider and far more destructive warfare.

Special Ops Stepped Up In Iran

A good read from The New Yorker:

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Read Woodward's Bush at War trilogy and you can see where this going.

Selling Arms to Iran = “Neat”

From BraveNewFilms:

FOX contributor Oliver North was on Hannity & Colmes to discuss whether George W. Bush was right when he took a shot at Barack Obama, comparing Obama to Nazi appeaser Neville Chamberlain for wanting to have diplomatic talks with Iran. North, who, as you may recall, actually sold weapons to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair and lied to Congress about it, said this:


As you know, I’m the history guy at Fox News Channel, right? I’ve done this WWII series – 52 of our episodes about WWII. Had it not been for Chamberlain going to sit down with Adolf Hitler and try to cut a deal in Munich, WWII might never have happened, but it emboldened the dictator. That’s what the President said yesterday in Jerusalem. And a little reminder today, a shot across the bow here at the NRA, when John McCain got up and said, ‘You cannot have these kinds of unconditional, no preconditions discussions, with despots and dictators’ - dead on the mark.

After the Iran-Contra scandal was exposed, North admitted that he’d lied to Congress and that he thought selling weapons to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war (while the US was supporting Iraq and Saddam Hussein) to provide money for the Contras was a “neat idea”.

To recap — talking to Iran = Nazi appeasement. Defying Congress to sell arms to Iran = “neat” idea. And for that, North was aptly named May 19th's Worst Person in the World.

I think the video above from American Dad says it all. And here's more of why the Neville Chamberlain analogy is utter bullshit.

Arsham Parsi's Story

War With Iran Hard To Justify

Barnett thinks the Israel excuse is pretty flimsy:

Israel's 200 nuclear warheads provide all the genocidal capacity it needs to adequately defend itself. This strategic Goliath can hardly pass as David any more, meaning any American obligation to ensure survival was fulfilled long ago.

Now, with such great power comes great responsibility. There are no chosen peoples in such strategic calculations, just immeasurable risk for a species.

We are way beyond anyone's claim on "holy lands" at that point.

Great piece.

via Thomas P.M. Barnett

Iranian Blogosphere

From Harvard:

Given the repressive political and media environment, and high profile arrests and harassment of bloggers, one might not expect to find much political contestation in the blogosphere. However, we identified a subset of the secular/reformist pole focused intently on politics and current affairs and comprised mainly of bloggers living inside Iran, which is linked in contentious dialog with the conservative political sub-cluster. Surprisingly, a minority of bloggers in the secular/reformist pole appear to blog anonymously, even in the more politically-oriented part of it; instead, it is more common for bloggers in the religious/conservative pole to blog anonymously.

via Berkman Center for Internet & Society

More On Mehdi Kazemi

via BraveNewFilms

Help Save Mehdi Kazemi

A gay Iranian faces deportation back to Iran, even though he may be executed:

There's now a website in support of Mehdi Kazemi (previous news reports have spelled his first name Mehdi), the Iranian teen who was just ordered sent back to the UK from The Netherlands and now faces possible deportation from Britain back to Iran even though he may be executed if he returns.

Kazemi's request for asylum in the UK was turned down in 2006 after British authorities determined that Iran is a country that does not systematically persecute gays. But that's because Iran does not recognize homosexuality.

Instead, they trump up false charges on gay teens and then execute them.


Go to Towleroad, read, and then do something.

via Towleroad